The Mourning After
by CardioQueen
Summary: Companion fic to Six Days. Bang.AN: This is a tough fic to read. It deals with the things that somebody goes through when a loved one dies, and how they aren't themselves. Read the whole thing before you give up on it.
1. Prologue

_The bitter wind stings at my cheeks, burning as I stand over a shallow and muddied grave. This is where the man that I love now resides. In a cold and dark place. In a shallow and muddied grave._

_The rain falls from the heavens masking the tears that I allow to slide from my face and the grey skies pale in comparison to the storm that brews in my heart as I kneel down to the ground, muddy water soaking through my jeans. I know that the water is cold. I don't feel that it is cold, though._

_I don't feel anything anymore, except for emptiness. _

_I trace my fingers over the ring that he left for me. The ring that was meant to be so much more than a bitter reminder of the fact that even in death I couldn't utter the three words that I'm sure that he wanted me to whisper more than life itself._

_Funny._

_More than life itself._

_I open my mouth to speak to him, as if he can hear me, as if I might say something that would stir him from the cold dark place where he now resides and he would respond. _

_"I can't do this without you." Is the first thing that escapes my lips, followed by "You made me love. You broke me down, you built me back up and you made me love. You made me need you more than I needed air, then you left me." _

_My hair falls forward into my face, wet, cold. And I only hurt more as I realize that he's not here to brush it away. He's not here to wipe the tears from my eyes, love in his, and tell me that it will all be okay, that I can get through this._

_I don't believe in God, but it's at this point that I have to believe in Heaven._

_I have to believe in something, because I cannot sit here over this muddied and shallow grave and believe that the man I love will lie here for eternity, a hollow and empty corpse with an unbeating heart and no purpose._

_I have to believe that he's got purpose, somewhere, somehow that he's still...alive._

_I scoff at myself and think of the pure thought of there being an afterlife, of there being a heaven. Thinking he's still alive, like he's watching over me or something._

_Life is cruel, but death is crueler, and there is no such thing as a happy ending. _

_It's in this moment, that I finally realize that I loved him so much that I would rather be in the cold and dark place with him. _

_I would rather join him in death, then live without him._

_And I couldn't even tell him that I loved him._


	2. Chapter 1

Cristina entered the locker room quietly, unceremoniously, but shifted nervously as she felt all eyes on her and her hand flew to the ring on her finger.

It had become her ground, her touchstone.

The last bit of strength she had.

It had been three weeks since he'd left her.

Three weeks since he abandoned her, no, banished her to a cruel life in the aftermath of loving with no lover.

It was like breathing without air.

Meredith was at her side before she had time to take two steps into the locker room and she pushed her away, "I don't need your sympathy." She muttered.

It was apparent in that moment that the Cristina Yang that had grown, and evolved and shifted from complacence to a semblance of a human being was no more.

She had died with Burke.

She took her place in front of her locker and pulled it open for a moment to grab her pager and a few select things, notes and miniature med books, and froze at the sight of the coffee cup she'd stashed in there so long ago, with the yellow sticky note, and the other errant memoirs that she'd kept from him.

Her mouth hung open in anger at herself for keeping such ridiculous things and she gathered it up in her arms, stalking towards the trashcan and dropping them in there, throwing away the little pieces of her life that she'd accumulated from him.

"Okay, people, assignments." Bailey's voice sliced through her agony and she snapped to attention.

"Grey, scut. O'Malley, you're with Dr. Hahn..." Bailey's voice trailed off, searching Cristina's expression as Hahn's name fell from her lips.

Three weeks since the man she loved had died and they'd already replaced him.

Like he was dispensable. Disposable.

Just any old surgeon that could be easily replaced by another.

But Cristina didn't flinch.

"Karev, with Sloane. Stevens, you're with Montgomery-Shepherd." She finished off the list and aimed a threatening glance at the interns and they scattered from the room quickly, leaving Bailey and Cristina in a deafening silence that tore through Bailey.

She laid a hand on Cristina's arm, but Cristina retracted immediately, "I just want my assignment, Dr. Bailey." Her voice was cold, almost venomous, and Bailey's heart ached for the girl in front of her.

"Dr. Shepherd has requested you, but I will..."

"That's fine, thank you." Cristina cut her off, "I'm an intern. I do not want you to cater to me, I don't want you to act like I'm in some sort of special situation. You forced me into taking time off, and I took it. Now I'm back. I don't want to hear an utterance of Burke's name. I don't want people to ask me if I'm okay. I don't want people to look at me like I'm a sad case and I should be at home weeping in a corner. I'm an intern. Not a freak show."

Bailey was taken aback, but in the same time she was undisturbed by Cristina's reaction to his loss.

"Dr. Shepherd is waiting for you." She finally uttered, and watched as Cristina disappeared from the room.

She lowered herself to the hard wooden bench that the interns typically occupied and brought her face to her hands, tears stinging at her eyes. She knew in her heart that Cristina had to be aching, and her heart ached for her.

Bailey was a wife. A mother.

Cristina could've been all of those things, would've been all of those things had life not been so cruel.

She gave herself a moment to grieve not only over the loss of such a good friend, such a great surgeon from Seattle Grace, but to grieve for the woman that Cristina used to be and the shattered girl that she was now before she stood, straightened her jacket and dabbed at tears in her eyes.

Bailey forced a cold glare in her eyes and a hard set look on her face before emerging from the locker room.

Nobody needed to know that the Nazi cried.


	3. Chapter 2

_The hospital is empty without you, though I never saw you much here with the exception of our call room rendezvous._

_Is it wrong that my body aches at the very thought of the things we did to each other in our call room? Is it wrong that you've gone and I miss the lovemaking along with the other things; your eyes, your whispers in the dark, your arm around my waist while I sleep? Is it wrong to miss the things that you did to me in the dark?_

_I didn't know how to feel before I met you, what emotions were appropriate in what situation._

_I never cared._

_You made me care._

_And for a while, I knew that it was okay to feel. To have emotion._

_And now you're still gone, and I don't know what to feel._

_My eyes dart around the surgical unit, and my heart wrenches because I feel like I should see you somewhere, one of your scrub caps tucked behind a desk, you pouring over a chart. Something._

_Instead I see Derek Shepherd and waves of nausea crash against my being with such a strong force that I have to brace myself against the nurse's station as I feel the bile rise, stinging the back of my throat and threatening to expel itself._

_I tell myself that he didn't kill you, but I know all too well that it's his fault._

_Your white count was elevated. So he gave you a quinolone. The quinolone weakened your heart muscle because he gave you such an incredibly high dose because he wanted to prevent osteomyelitis, a painful infection of the bone._

_Then while in surgery, he decided to pull a wake-up test that you didn't tell me about._

_You hid that part from me._

_Your body couldn't handle the stress, and your heart gave out._

_Your heart broke._

_Along with mine._

_You should've told me about the wake up test, you bastard. You should've told me and I could've been there. I could've done something differently. I could've brought you back. I could've figured out the right med, the right dose, the right words to bring you back._

_I could've done something._

_And you'd still be here._

_I wish that I could forget you. That I could forget the way you made me feel that early morning, the last time you walked into this hospital when you promised me that it would just be four days and that everything would be alright._

_I wish I could forget the way your lips grazed over my skin._

_I wish I could forget the heat of your body against mine while we laid in bed at night, your breath tickling my neck, your arms holding me tight._

_I wish that I was the one who had died instead of you, that you had to feel the pain that you caused me in this moment. I nearly lost you one time already._

_This hospital is full of people who need surgery. Who can be cut open, their problem removed and sutured closed, and be as good as new. _

_I envy them._


	4. Chapter 3

Derek Shepherd looked up from the chart and found Cristina Yang standing in front of him and his blood ran cold.

He had requested her with the very intention of trying in some vain sort of way to make it up to her that the love of her life was gone. But as she came into his view, there were no words, he couldn't find the right thing to say to her.

What was he going to do? Promise her numerous surgeries?

Like cutting was going to cure the void that Preston Burke had left in her life? Like the sigh of blood and brains was going to heal the permanent wound in her heart.

He mentally cursed himself for thinking of such ridiculous things.

Preston Burke would never be replaced by surgeries, and Cristina Yang would never be cured from her pain by cutting.

She appeared before him while he was lost in thought and he looked up from the chart that he prepared to be buried in, "Cristina.." He breathed her name, fighting for oxygen. Fighting for the words.

"Please do not address me by my first name, Dr. Shepherd, it's not professional." Her reply was icy, exacted and precise in it's delivery. Her gaze cut through him, sharper than a 10 blade and he immediately began to regret his decision to request her for the day.

"Dr. Yang. We have a busy board today, you'll be scrubbing in on everything, of course. I need you to got work up room 4815 for an aneurysm repair, and meet me in the OR in 15 minutes." He tried to be professional, but he couldn't hide the pain and concern in his eyes.

Cristina watched as the man walked away from her, and the nausea intensified in her stomach and she ran for the bathroom, unable to choke down the acid burning away at her esophagus any longer.

She huddled over the toilet, her hair falling around her face as she vomited bile and coffee, her eyes watering heavily. She fought the reflex as hard as she could, but it kept coming, and she remained over the toilet for a period of time, heaving and crying.

Was it the emptiness and the being in the hospital that caused the tears or the pain in her abdomen from heaving that was making her cry? She did not know for sure, but she preferred to think it was the latter.

When her body finally relented she stumbled back against the wall, her mouth soured from the taste of vomit and she wiped angrily at her eyes.

She would not succumb to weakness.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Derek watched from a darkened corner of the nurse's station as she exited the bathroom and went to the water fountain, rinsing out her mouth.

He had played over the events in his head, time and time again since the very moment that Burke had died.

She was so dedicated to him.

He remembered vividly the look in her eyes as he and Burke got on the elevator, the fierce determination in her eyes as she followed them into the exam room, questioning him regarding the facts about the surgery as Burke remained menacingly silent.

In his mind, that is when he knew for sure that Cristina was committed to that relationship, that's when Cristina Yang quit being Cristina Yang and started being Burke's girlfriend.

And he destroyed that.

But she was not living.

He brought his fist to his mouth, cursing himself for thinking of such things, for getting himself so worked up before surgery, but the very sight of this woman now was frightening to him.

She was not Cristina Yang.

She was not Burke's girlfriend.

She was a stranger, she was a ghost of a woman that used to be strong and fierce. A woman that used to be a force to be reckoned with. Her radiant skin had paled, and she'd lost weight, no doubt from eating barely anything, even her wild black tresses seemed to hang lifelessly from her head.

Not only was Burke's blood on his hands, but Cristina's was as well, only her heart was still beating. She was still breathing.

But she would never be the same.

And the blood was on his hands.


	5. Chapter 4

_4815._

_It's the last place that our lips met, the last place that I heard you utter the words 'I love you.'_

_The last place that I would ever have the opportunity to say it back, and I didn't take it. I thought I had all the time in the world. _

_I thought that we had all the time in the world._

_I look in the room, and there's a young black male lying in the bed, and I have to do a double take, because I think I see you for a moment, and my heart wrenches within me._

_There's a little girl on the floor, coloring and laughing, and a woman sitting on the bed with my patient, her fingers tracing over his face lovingly, they're wrapped up in each other._

_Nausea finds me again, but I don't worry about vomiting._

_I'm truly empty at this point._

_I take in a deep breath and try to enter the room, but my feet feel like lead, and I cannot move them, only stare into the room at the happy family whose lives could be as easily shattered as ours was._

_All too soon._

_At least they had a chance. At least they have a child, and they had a wedding, and they had their honeymoon._

_They got a chance._

_We never got a chance._

_I have to remind myself all too often now that life is not fair, and I can't help but think that somewhere along the way I made a decision that caused all of this._

_That caused you to leave me too soon._

_That took away our chance at domesticity._

_At happiness._

_I hate you for making me long for such things, and I hate you for making me feel weak, and empty, and lonely, and apathetic._

_I hate you for making me care._

_And I miss you._

_And I need you._

_And I'll never have you again._

_And now, I find myself staring at the numbers 4815 and I can't go in there. I can't go in that room, because you're not there. I can't go in that room, because that is the last place that I could've told you that I loved you, the last place that I could've told you that I couldn't live without you, and maybe you would've remembered those words as you took your last breaths, and fought harder._

_Damn you, Burke._

_I try to move my feet again, and they still won't go and I decide it isn't my feet that don't feel like lead, it's the weight of the ring that you left for me that holds me back._

_It's the weight of your love that I couldn't return that keeps me frozen, keeps me from moving forward._

_And I can't give it back to you, and you can't take it back._

_Damn you._


	6. Chapter 5

Izzie watched quietly as Cristina stood outside of room 4815, a chart in hand, her eyes frozen on the occupants of the room, her body poised to move, but frozen in space.

Her heart ached as he realized that it was Burke's room before he died.

She crept slowly towards her, biting back tears of sympathy, "Cristina." She mumbled, pulling the chart from her hands.

Cristina didn't fight it as the chart left her hands, "I have to do a preoperative assessment, and I need to get him to surgery." She spoke, her voice barely above a whisper.

"I can do it for you."

She looked to Izzie, her eyes dark and empty and swallowed hard, "How did you do it, Iz?"

"Do what?" She questioned quietly, already knowing the answer to the question.

Cristina bit her lip for a moment, and chided herself for a moment of weakness, then pulled the chart from Izzie's hands, "Never mind."

She stalked into the room, anger replacing sadness and went about her work, cold, complacent and uncaring.

Izzie shivered as she saw Cristina work with exactitude as she went through the movements of a physical assessment. A precise and well choreographed dance that she knew all too well.

_Inspection._

She remember the last time that she saw Denny. He looked better. He had skin color. His breathing wasn't labored.

But hers was. He took her breath away.

_Palpation._

She remembered the last time that he touched her, the way that he cupped her face in his soft hands.

_Auscultation._

More than anything else she remembered lying in bed next to him after he was gone, her head against his chest and not being able to hear the rhythmic lub-dub of his heartbeat.

She also remembered hoping against all hope that if she just laid there long enough, that he'd come back, that he would get his color back, that he'd pull her close to him and that she could hear the sound of his heart beating.

Tears began to spill from her eyes as she realized how jealous she was being, and guilt overrode her thoughts of Denny as she came to realize that the only reason that Preston Burke was dead was because she killed him.

She was the one who had fallen in love with a patient.

She was the one who cut the LVAD wire in an act of desperation.

She was the one who made Preston Burke come back to Seattle Grace, placing him in the line of fire.

If he hadn't of been shot, he wouldn't of gotten the tremors.

If he hadn't of gotten the tremors, he wouldn't have needed another surgery.

If he didn't need another surgery, he wouldn't have died.

Izzie laid her hands against the wall, trying to brace herself as her world spun around her, darkness and anger enveloping her being and she wondered how Cristina could even look at her.

How she could even look at herself in the mirror.

Not only did her forbidden love take one life, it took two.

She continued to watch Cristina as she emerged from the room and she shook her head, looking away from her ashamed. Dirty. Guilty.

Izzie Stevens had taken away the love of her life through a series of events that she herself had started and she wondered if Cristina thought the same.


	7. Chapter 6

_I used to look forward to surgeries before you left._

_I used to love to be wrapped up in the scent of the scrub, the sterility of the OR, the sound of heart monitors and oxygen._

_But now the only thing I want to be wrapped up in is your arms._

_The smell of the scrub brings me back to the day that I watched you, no...listened to you die in the gallery._

_I look at my ring and know that I need to take it off, and my heart aches as I have to do so. I tuck it gently in my pocket, my heart aching as I do so._

_The one thing I have left of you that I can carry with me and I have to tuck it away for surgery_

_I have to push you out of my mind._

_It's for the better._

_How is it that you continue to make me doubt my own thoughts, even in death? How is it that you continue to baffle and confuse me, and make me wonder if I ever really knew what the hell was going on._

_I tear open the scrub package and I choke on the scent and I feel the sting of acid at the back of my throat once more, the nefarious smell of povidone and alcohol assaulting my senses and overwhelming me. _

_I lose control of myself once again and lurch over the trashcan, bile spilling from my lips again and I wonder if I'll ever be able to make it. I wonder if I'll ever find that edge that I once had. _

_The edge I had before I found you._

_The edge I wanted back before I lost you._

_After my stomach is satisfied in causing me physical torture I sip cool water from my cupped hands and spit it back out, knowing that if I had to breathe in the odor of my own vomit for the next four hours I would cause a great deal of contamination in the OR._

_I tie on my mask and pick up the scrub brush, rubbing it harshly against my skin, peeling away the emotions, a layer of infecting bacteria at a time._

_I glance out into the OR at the patient being prepped for surgery and I see my reflection in the glass, only my eyes exposed and I remember the way we used to talk without words._

_The way that you used to look at me during surgery, before the tremors, the way that you used to undress me with your eyes while asking me questions._

_A game of yours that we favored a great deal._

_I also remember the eyes that you had for me whenever we were trying to hide your tremors from the hospital._

_Why couldn't you have stayed mad at me, dammit?_

_Why couldn't you have kicked me out, pushed me away, told me to leave, why did you have to forgive me?_

_Would it have been easier if I thought that you hated me whenever you died? Would it hurt this much if I hadn't have seen it happen?_

_I hate these questions._

_I'm supposed to have the answers, I'm supposed to have the reasoning._

_I'm supposed to have the logic behind it all._

_You took it all away from me, Burke._

_I hope you're happy with yourself._


	8. Chapter 7

Mark Sloane watched her work quietly from the gallery during the surgery. Everybody else looked at her like the love of her life died, but he knew that she didn't want to be looked at like that.

He knew that she didn't want anybody to look at her at all.

But he watched her anyway, a different look in his eye. A look like a snake on the prowl. He didn't care how long it had been since she lost her boyfriend, how long she'd had to mourn, she was weak and vulnerable.

So easily there for the taking that it was painful.

He watched quietly as they closed and he saw her move from the OR, slow, pained, the walking wounded and he decided it was time to make his move.

Cristina pulled the mask from her face, and then the scrub cap, letting her curls fall gently to her shoulders and she let out a long exhale as Mark stepped into the room next to her, "Dr. Yang." He mumbled quietly.

"Dr. Sloane."

She pulled the gown from her body, weak and weary from the amount of vomiting she'd done in her first morning back at work, and she felt his eyes on her as she threw it in the trash.

Cristina turned, expecting to find another set of sad eyes, another set of eyes pitying her, thinking her pathetic for even coming back to work so soon. Eyes that accused her of being weak, vulnerable. Eyes that accused her of being uncaring.

But his eyes were different.

His eyes were hungry, lustful, needy.

Mark Sloane was not looking at her like everybody else was. He looked at her like she was a woman, and not an object of sorrow.

She let the corners of her lips curl into a slight smile, "Can I help you with something?"

He stepped closer to her, accepting the smile as an invitation for more, his voice low and husky, "The question is, can I help you with something?"

She looked to him, and something took over her body, that was unexpected, she began to ache for physical contact. Her emotions washed away and she backed out of the scrub room, Sloane quickly in tow.

Cristina pushed open the door to the call room, and he locked it behind him as he stepped in, tugging his pants down.

There were no words to be said, and he pressed his lips against hers, and she turned away, her own lips searing under his, so he moved his mouth down further, trailing his tongue down her neck and her flesh burned as he did so.

She felt her pants coming down over her hips, and she did nothing to fight it. It was too late for turning back now.

He moved into her and she stifled a gasp of horror, as reality became all to painful at that moment. She felt her the ring that he left for her in the pocket of her scrubs, pressing hard against her skin under Sloane's weight, tearing through her conscious like a 10 blade.

It had only been three weeks.

What was she thinking?

What was she doing?

She wanted to push him away, to push him out of her, to make it stop.

Her body screamed under his touch, her skin felt like it was ripping itself from her body, it wasn't supposed to hurt like this, it was all wrong, it was too much, it wasn't enough.

It wasn't Burke.

She felt him release himself deep within her and she wanted to vomit again, she felt dirty, used.

She felt as if she had betrayed him.

Her feet met the floor and she pulled at her pants, trying to cover herself, as he looked at her, another notch in his belt.

Another conquest.

And he smiled at her, knowing what he'd done, but his eyes were cold and uncaring, and he left her there to wallow in her own misery and filth.

She pulled the ring from her pocket and forced it back on her finger, her heart heavy with guilt and she slid down the wall, bringing her head to her hands as the tears began to flow.

It had only been three weeks.

Her heart was racing, her stomach churning. Tears marred her scrubs, and she looked to her skin, trying to see if there was a physical sign of the dirt and the filth that she felt on the inside, like her blood had been muddied.

He'd only been gone for three weeks.

She felt weak, drained, her body exhausted. She felt what little energy she had in her reserves empty from her body in that moment.

Something else was wrong.

She wasn't just a whore, there was something else wrong with her.

Silently she wished for it to take her, and she closed her eyes, waiting for death to come and steal her away.

But the door to the call room opened instead and she tried to look up, but her head was too heavy, and her eyes would not open.

Her world faded around her and the last thing she felt was the cold tiled floor against her hot skin.


	9. Chapter 8

_I am so sorry._

_I'm so sorry, Burke, I'm so sorry._

_I don't know what happened. What came over me. I don't know why I did it._

_But he was looking at me, and nobody else was._

_Nobody else looks at me like I'm fine, they all look at me like I'm a sympathy case, like I'm fragile._

_Easily broken._

_I didn't do it to hurt you._

_  
I didn't do it because I wanted to make love with another man._

_God, it wasn't love Burke, I promise you, it wasn't even close to it. It wasn't close to anything. It wasn't even mindless sex, or casual sex._

_I want to tear out my insides, I want to wash him off of me and pretend that it never happened, but I know that it happened._

_And I know that I can't take it back._

_I just wanted..._

_I just wanted to feel alive again._

_And I thought that maybe I would._

_But now?_

_I still feel empty, and now I feel dirty._

_I feel like I was never worthy of you, that I could never be worthy of you._

_But he was looking at me the way that you used to look at me, and he was there._

_And you weren't._

_You left me._

_But you left me broken. I'll never be able to be with another guy. I'll never be able to look at a man and see the things I saw in you._

_I laid on the floor of the call room and prayed to die, do you know that?_

_I prayed._

_I don't pray._

_But I prayed to die, so that I wouldn't have to live this life without you anymore, and I thought I'd get my wish._

_Everything was so dark around me, and my heart was pounding in my ears, and I've been nauseous all day, and I thought that just maybe, there might be something else wrong with me. _

_That three weeks had been enough torture and that I wouldn't have to live without you anymore._

_But now I'm sitting in the pit._

_And my heart is still pumping oxygenated blood from the muscles to the extremities._

_And my lungs are still moving air in and out of my body._

_But my heart quit beating when yours did._

_And I quit breathing when you did._

_And now I'm here, I'm still technically alive._

_And I have to live with what I did._


	10. Chapter 9

Addison Montgomery stood over Cristina, a pained look in her eyes that she tried to push away. She stroked her forehead in a gentle and motherly sort of way, knowing herself what it was like for Mark Sloane to find a woman in a weak moment.

Cristina stirred under her touch and startled a bit as she opened her eyes, and pulled away, "I'm fine."

Her demeanor was cold and detached, but her intonation betrayed the show that she tried to put on.

"Cristina...I need to talk to you about something." Addison sighed, pulling a chair up beside the gurney and lowering herself.

"What's he got?" She muttered, pulling the blanket around herself tighter.

Addison forced a smile away from her lips as she recognized that in any other circumstance that such a thing might be funny, entertaining even, but not in Cristina's case.

"It's not about Mark."

"Then why are you here?" Her words worse crisp and she looked to Addison and saw that look in her eye.

It was the same look that was in Derek's eyes when he told her that Burke had died, it was the same look that Meredith had in her eye when the ring rolled across the floor to her feet, it was the same look in Jane's eye when she had said that she was sorry about Burke.

"Cristina, you...you're.." Addison fought for the words, trying to figure out a way to lessen the blow. "When ran some tests, to try to find out why you fainted on the call room floor, and your Hcg levels were high."

Cristina looked to her in shock and she felt her airway constrict, the world began to spin around her, "I'm pregnant??" She questioned, shaking her head.

"I'd like to do an ultrasound to confirm, but it seems that way."

"I'm pregnant? I can't be pregnant...it has to be a mistake." Cristina's hand slid down to her stomach and then flew away.

She couldn't be pregnant.

He left her alone.

He left her.

He could not leave her alone with a child.

Addison laid her hand over Cristina's, "Cristina...look at me, I want you to look at me, I'm going to do an ultrasound to confirm, okay?"

Cristina nodded lightly, unable to say anything, unable to protest. She felt powerless, she felt like a little girl lost, and she couldn't find the edge she needed.

She couldn't find strength.

Because her source of strength was lying in a muddied and shallow grave.

"I have to do a transvaginal ultrasound, Cristina...because you're probably not very far along if you are pregnant." Addison spoke to her as if she wouldn't know, but she thought it would lessen the blow. She leaned over the bed to help her lay back, and tried to make her as comfortable as possible before she prepared herself to do the ultrasound.

Addison couldn't help but think as she began the procedure that she was violating Cristina for a second time in one day, and she tried to focus on the screen, tried to focus on anything but her personal feelings.

She looked up to the screen to see the embryonic sac already formed, and a small, but rapidly forming embroyo, the beginnings of the umbilical cord keeping it harnessed to the chorion, and she felt a tugging at her heart, and that familiar sting in her eyes.

"Do you want to see your baby, Cristina?" She managed to choke out the words.

Cristina's mouth opened, and she ran her fingers over the ring again, and looked away, "I can't."

Her words were soft.

"Do you want a print so that you can look later?" Addison pressed, knowing that she needed to see this baby.

She needed to see that a part of him was still very much with her.

"I can't." She repeated.

"Cristina..." Addison started.

"I can't. Just.." She interrupted then froze.

Just what?

Terminate the pregnancy?

Reach to her inner depths, and scrape out the life that now took residence within her body? Vacuum it out and send it out with the medical waste, as if it were nothing.

Meredith stepped into the room and looked to Addison, knowing in her eyes, "Give me the print. She'll want to see it later."

Addison nodded, and pressed some buttons on the monitor, "I'll need to see you, in a couple weeks Cristina."

Cristina nodded at her, still unable to find words, unable to express exactly what the hell it was that she was feeling.

"She's okay to go, as long as everything else has been cleared." Addison looked to Meredith and handed her the print, "Schedule the appointment for two weeks in my office."

Meredith quietly thanked her, taking the prints, "Cristina, come on. We're going to go home."

She accepted Meredith's help moving as she helped her to slide her jeans up, helped her zip and button them. She felt her slide her sweater on over her arms, and she looked down, "Why am I in my street clothes?"

Nothing made sense.

Meredith helped her from the gurney, "I'm going to take you home, Cristina. We're going home."

Cristina trembled under Meredith's grasp, "I'm pregnant."

"I know." Meredith mumbled back at her, leading her from the ER.

"I can't do this. On my own. I can't handle things anymore. I don't feel like myself."

"You aren't on your own, Cristina. I'm here for you."

She looked to Meredith and in a fleeting moment, she wished that she still had Burke, and she had lost Meredith instead, then chided herself for thinking such things. "Yeah."

"C'mon...let's go home."

"Can we stop...on the way..." She mumbled, her heart aching, she needed to talk to him, to tell him what had happened.

What he'd done to her.

Meredith pulled her along, her arm tightly around her shoulder. "We can stop to see Burke."


	11. Chapter 10

_I'm here again._

_I'm here. _

_The wind is still cold, and it is still burning my cheeks, and the rain is still falling, and my hair is still wet, but there's something different now. _

_You got your way, y'know._

_I'm sure you know._

_You got your way and now I'm pregnant. You left me with a little piece of you, and I wish I could say that it makes me happy, but I can't._

_It makes me hate you more._

_I don't want a little piece of you. I want all of you. I want you here._

_I can't do this by myself, Burke._

_I think I did an apt job of proving that today._

_About that, y'know...if you could just ignore it. It was weakness, it was ignorance. I don't know what it was, but you left me, so I think I get at least one pass, because the guilt can eat enough at me for the both of us._

_Meredith is in the car, and I know that I shouldn't stay long, but just being here...by you. It makes me feel a little better, even though you'll never talk back._

_Maybe it's my punishment for making you do all the talking, making you take all the steps while you were here._

_If I knew why, I promise if I had a chance to do it all over again, I'd do so many things differently._

_I'd change everything about me if it meant I could just have more time with you._

_Oh, God...Burke._

_How could you leave me with a baby? _

_How could you leave me with such a huge responsibility? Such a big thing to do?_

_I have to raise this, and make sure that it doesn't end up fucked up. That it doesn't need years of therapy._

_What am I supposed to tell it about it's daddy? Where it's daddy is?_

_How do you tell a child that it's father died before it was ever even thought of? That it was just a freak cosmic accident that it ever came about?_

_It's first steps would be bitter because you wouldn't be there to film it._

_The first time that it uses monosyllabic speech and says 'da-da-da-da' it will kill me just a little more to tell him that it doesn't have one._

_There won't ever be a family picture, or a family dinner, or a birthday party that isn't wrought with sadness because you aren't here to see it._

_And who's supposed to hold my hand and tell me that I'm doing a good job when I'm in labor, tell me that if I could hold on just a little longer that it will all be overwith?_

_Tell me that._

_Tell me what the hell you were thinking when you gave up on me. When you left me alone to deal with this._

_Though I can talk, and pretend like I'm at war with myself over what to do with this child, you and I both know that I owe you this._

_I know that even though this kid isn't a replacement, and I'll never feel whole again, I know it's the last living and breathing piece of you, and I couldn't ever push that away._

_I pushed you away enough in life._


	12. Chapter 11

Meredith pushed the door open to Cristina's apartment, as she'd trained herself so hard to think and Cristina shuffled in after her, her jeans muddied and hair dampened from the rain.

The apartment was dark and empty, much like Cristina felt and she flipped on the light, surveying it, somewhere in her mind wishing that he'd be there, that it was still all a bad dream, but every time she flipped on the light, she opened the door, she opened her eyes, he was still gone, and she was still there.

"I'm going to go shower." She told Meredith quietly, and disappeared from sight, and Meredith laid her head in her hands, tears falling freely from her eyes in Cristina's absence.

She gazed around the apartment, and everything in it. It looked as if Burke were still here.

Cristina compulsively cleaned everything, picked up every journal that Meredith pulled out and put it back in it's rightful place. She washed the dishes, she folded towels, she did laundry. She had become everything that Cristina never was.

Meredith pulled down a pan from the cupboard and her mind flashed back to the first time that Cristina cried, and the tears fell harder as the image of her fallen on the cold ground, doubled over in so much unimaginable pain burned into her memory uninvited.

She wondered if she'd ever see the Cristina she came to love ever again. It had been three weeks, and she'd never seen one faked smile, heard a snarky comment, or seen a single glimpse of her old smart ass self. She knew that she had lost the man she loved, and she knew it must be painful, but she thought that she'd at least have one good day.

One day where the pain was dulled at least a little, and where she could feel something other than bitterness and sorrow.

Today, though, would not be that day.

Mark Sloane saw to that.

She pondered for a moment, what he had said or done to Cristina to make her go in the call room with her, and then she wondered if she'd done it of her own free will.

Meredith decided it was the latter.

When her McDreamy had left her, though he was still very much alive, she felt numb on the insides, and it was about the one-night stands. Anyone who could ease the pain, give her physical pleasure and then go about there business.

Detached sex.

Being detached was easier. There was no mess left behind. No egos wounded, and certainly no broken hearts.

Cristina was simply looking for a temporary cure for her pain, and it became too much before it was ever over.

It only made her pain worse.

Meredith knew in her heart, that this child was the best for her, because if she didn't have the baby, that she'd be alone for the rest of her life.

She'd never be able to love again.


	13. Chapter 12

_I turn on the water and let it run down my back and shoulders, I have to wash this filth from my skin._

_I have to wash him off of me._

_I have to forget that I ever did this to you._

_God, if I could just kiss you one more time, so I could honestly say that you were the last man that I kissed. _

_I spit towards the drain, trying to rid his taste from my mouth and I scrub more fervently to wash his scent away from my skin, thinking that if I just scrub hard enough, I can scrub away my sin._

_My mistake._

_My betrayal._

_I close my eyes and try to picture the last time we were in here together, and my stomach churns as I remember that it was the morning that we went to the hospital together. _

_So I shove the memory from my mind instead of trying to remember it._

_I still have your shower gel, and every time I get in the shower, I open it up and smell it, and try so very hard to remember when I'd spread it across your back, my fingers tracing every etched line in your back, and shoulders. How I used to genuinely smile when I could make you shiver under my touch._

_And how every time you just couldn't take it and you'd have to turn around, and pin me against the shower wall, and spread kisses every where you could._

_The way your hands used to grasp my waist while we made love._

_My hands come to my stomach and my touch lightens unconsciously and I freeze, dropping the loofah to the shower floor._

_There's nothing there now, really. _

_No lump, no hardened spot._

_The uterus is still a pelvic organ until about 16 weeks, meaning that it will be at least another 10 weeks before I can see it. _

_And another six until I can breathe a little easier and know that life will not be cruel again and take away this last living piece of Preston Burke._

_I wonder if I should give the baby Burke's last name, if I should name it after him if it's a boy._

_But then I wonder again what I'll tell him about you._

_How I'll tell him about you._

_I still don't understand how this could happen; I still can't comprehend the levity of this situation. _

_You left._

_You're dead._

_We were doing better._

_You were going to marry me._

_And now I wear your ring without protest._

_You wanted a family._

_And I'm pregnant._

_The picture has come together._

_Your dreams are fulfilled._

_But you're not here to see them._

_And I hate you for leaving me with your dreams, and taking mine with you. _


	14. Chapter 13

It had been 2 and a half months since the rumors ran rampant through the hospital that Cristina Yang had slept with Mark Sloane. Since 'the robot' proved to the world that she didn't really care about Preston Burke, that she was only using him for 'his money', 'his status' or whatever else it was that the nurse's and other staff could come up with what he had that she wanted.

It had been 3 weeks since Mark Sloane left Seattle Grace Hospital at the threat of Richard Webber, Miranda Bailey and a slew of interns, vowing that in the most professional of ways that they'd make him pay for the things he did to Cristina Yang.

It had been 2 weeks since George O'Malley finally decided that he wasn't going to let anybody hurt Cristina again. In life, he was Burke's 'guy'. In his death, he needed to protect his 'girl'.

George O'Malley watched quietly from a distance as Cristina poured quietly over a chart at the nurse's station, making notes, pausing every once in a while to clear her throat, or to stretch her arm out.

Though he'd never admit it to anybody else that he was keeping lookout for Burke, he continued because if he saw anybody come anywhere close to her, he was going to do something to keep her from getting hurt anymore. He didn't know what, exactly, but George would figure something out.

He was so angry with himself for being angry with Cristina, and though he'd forgiven her for the deceit that her and Burke had pulled, he hadn't been there for her since the death, he hadn't been there for her in the wake of recent events.

He just hadn't been there.

And had she not been there for him, his father would be dead.

George felt a debt to Burke in a way, to watch over Cristina, especially after Sloane took advantage of her, especially after finding out that she was pregnant. He thought that maybe, if he could protect her, keep her and their child safe, that he could make up for the things he said, the actions he committed to driving them apart for a week.

He knew in a way that the silence that tore between them was because he kept indirectly threatening her. Kept trying to make it known that he knew, and that if she didn't stop it, that everybody knew.

He damned himself for being so fucking passive aggressive.

"George?" Meredith laid a hand on his shoulder and he jumped just a little bit.

"Oh, hey...Meredith. I was just...sitting here, watching, I mean, waiting...damn." He fumbled over words, trying to think of something to cover himself and Meredith smiled at him shaking her head.

"You're not a good liar, George." She reminded him of his own words.

"Is she okay?" He resigned to opening himself up to Meredith. He always did.

"Okay isn't the word I'd ever use to describe Cristina, even when Burke was alive. But in her words, she's 'fine'." Meredith sighed, pulling her hair away from her face.

"Fine isn't good."

"No, it's not."

The two watched her for a moment, both aching for a way to help her, a way to reach out to her and make everything better.

But there was no making it better, unless they could figure out how to resurrect the dead.

"What's up?" George turned to Meredith, trying to change the subject, trying to divert the attention from her.

"I have a surgery that I have to scrub into, and somebody needs to go with her up to her OB appointment with Dr. Montgomery."

He looked to her, question in his eyes, "Do you think that she'd go with me? That she'd go if I offered to take her?"

"I already told her, and she said she'd deal...and you guys need to go, like now."

George's eyes widened, "You want me to take her now? You couldn't warn me about it or something?" 

"I'm sorry, I forgot."

Cristina rose from the chair and walked towards the stairwell where the two of them were standing, without looking to George she mumbled, "Let's go, Bambi."

But there was no spirit in it, the intonation of sarcasm mixed with sincerity was long gone.

He followed her quietly to the elevators and she pressed the button and his eyes fell to her stomach, that was gently starting to bulge beneath her scrubs.

"It's a uterus, O'Malley." she muttered angrily, "You've seen them before. Hell you've seen two. Do you really need to look at mine?"

He clenched his jaw, looking up to her face, and saw the pain in her eyes, "Do you know what it is yet?"

"It's a baby."

"The sex...do you know what the sex is yet?" He pressed, hoping to get her to talk, to get her to let something out.

"It doesn't matter as long as it comes out healthy, as long as it comes out..." her voice dropped of, and she choked on the words, trying to force them out, "breathing...alive."

The OB visits were always the most difficult for her, but Meredith had been there with her, and she cried on her shoulder, swearing to Meredith that if she'd ever told anyone that she was still upset that she'd kill her.

She couldn't let herself cry in front of George.

As they rounded the corner to Addison's office, she once again prepared herself to hear the words that the baby had died. That there was no heartbeat, that the fetus wasn't viable, that it had an omphalacele, ancephaly, a tetrology of fallot, left hypoplastic heart, a trisomy.

Anything that would take the baby away from her.

And every time, Addison told her it was fine.

That the baby was still alive, that it was perfectly formed.

And for a while she'd breathe easier.

She held back tears as they reached the door and she turned away from him, wiping furiously at her eyes, trying to mask the tears and he grabbed her arm, pulling her into a corner, away from the prying eyes of the hospital.

"Let it out." He whispered, giving her permission to grieve over the life in her stomach, the life that she lost.

She leaned against the wall, stifling sobs of anticipatory grieving, preparing to hear those words all over again. Preparing to have her heart shattered into a million pieces all over again.

George watched her lean against the cold wall for a moment, and decided that nobody should hurt alone. Nobody should cry like that and not have somebody there for him, and he moved to her, awkwardly wrapping his arms around her, and she struggled under his grasp, but he held firm, pulling her tighter, "I won't tell anyone." He mumbled low.

She stopped fighting and closed her eyes tighter, trying to regain her composure, and she finally pushed him away, using her lab coat to dab at the corners of her eyes and she looked to him, a hint of an apology, a glimmer of thanks in her reddened eyes and she walked away from him, to go into Addison's office.


	15. Chapter 14

_The gel is cold on my stomach and I wait impatiently as Addison presses the doppler, my heart rate slowing until I hear it._

_Every time I'm here, I expect her to say it's gone._

_That she was sorry, that there isn't anything she could do._

_But then that gentle and irregular swishing makes itself known. Steady and strong, a tiny heart beating deep within me, and I'm at ease for a little while._

_That sound is all I have to live for now._

_I keep wondering when this will all get easier, if one day I'll wake up and the hurt will go away, the sadness will go away._

_When the love I had for you will go away._

_And every day I wake up and I feel like I'm reliving the horror all over again._

_She helps me sit up and hands me a manila folder, the results of every test in the book so that I can rest assured that this baby is healthy and I don't want to open it._

_Because I know what it will say._

_So she opens it for me._

_I scan over the words and they all blur together behind a layer of tears I refuse to let spill and I can't read it._

_Normal, she says._

_Everything is normal._

_This baby will be making it's arrival in six months, healthy and happy. A healthy and happy baby boy._

_A boy._

_A son._

_My heart sinks a little, not because it's a boy, but because he'll never have a father to teach him how to play catch, or to coach his little league games._

_Or to teach him about Eugene Foote._

_Or the trumpet._

_If I could just wake up and have this all be a dream, I swear that I'd give you this child that you wanted so badly without reservation._

_I'd marry you and give you a family._

_If I could just wake up and have this all be a dream, I'd do anything you'd ask. I'd go to the ends of the earth for you._

_I'd live to lay on my chest and listen to the beat of your heart, instead of the heart beat of our son in my abdomen._

_I would do anything to hear your heartbeat instead of his._


	16. Chapter 15

Cristina stood in the doorway of her newly purchased and empty two bedroom home and slid her hand over her growing belly and bit her lip.

It was quaint.

Something small enough for a family of two, but large enough at the same time that a rambunctious little boy wouldn't feel trapped in four walls when it was too rainy to play outside.

Her heart ached as she knew that soon, everybody would be moving her things to this house, and she would have to turn over the key to their apartment for somebody else to move into.

To violate.

She tried to push the thoughts from her head as she wandered the house, looking at it with longing eyes, wishing that she could love it as much as she would if he were here with her.

Giving up the apartment was a huge step for her, but with the nearing due date of the baby, she couldn't live in a one bedroom apartment much longer.

She stepped into the smaller of the two bedrooms and she tried to picture herself, rocking and soothing their son to sleep, playing with him as a toddler, tucking him in before his first night of school, but all the images that flashed through her mind had him in them too and she sighed, leaving the room.

Why couldn't she just forget him?

Callie Torres pushed open the door to the house and stepped in, finding Cristina standing aimlessly in the living room and she forced a smile to her lips, "It's a nice house."

"Yeah." Cristina replied absently.

Callie picked up a box full of surgical journals and brought them in the door watching her closely, afraid to ask her where to put them, afraid that somehow she might say something to shatter her.

It was disheartening to her in a way to see such a strong and resilient woman so broken and fragile, and she saw in Cristina what could happen to her if she was to ever form such a strong attachment to George.

If he would ever stick.

She sat the box on the ground and crossed to her quietly, resting her hand on her arm, "The guys are coming in with all of the heavy stuff, but we didn't know what you wanted to do with...with..."

Burke's stuff. It shouldn't be that hard to say.

It had been almost six months, and she still had all of his clothes, his cologne, his razor, everything.

She couldn't bring herself to get rid of it.

"They can put it in the attic." Cristina finished the sentence for her, looking away, "I don't really need it in my room, since he's not here."

Callie nodded, swallowing hard, and walked away from her to gather more boxes from the moving truck and bring them in, leaving her to try to make sense of it all on her own.

She watched her quietly from the doorway before stepping out, wondering if the strong Cristina that everybody knew and loved, but hated at the same time would ever come back to them.

If the cold and complacent, and clinical Cristina Yang that existed before Burke would make an appearance.

Callie walked from the door knowing that it was too much to hope for, to see either one of those women again, to see the strong Cristina Yang that everybody knew ever again.

Because she died six months ago.


	17. Chapter 16

_It's sunny outside, and warm. _

_Though I feel as though the sun shouldn't ever shine again._

_I wish I could trace it down to which point it was that you made me like this so I could erase that memory, or that time, so I could go back to not caring._

_Not being needy or dependent._

_I haven't been here for a while, I know, and I'm sorry._

_I've been really busy, with moving and checkups and work, and I haven't been here to see you, and I'm sure you're angry with me._

_I had to stop here though, I wanted to be close to you because this is the closest I'll ever be again. _

_Meredith made me buy a house, because the apartment isn't big enough for me and a baby, y'know. _

_I told her I could get one later, after the baby started getting bigger and actually needed a separate room, but she wouldn't listen to me, she wouldn't let me keep the apartment, she told me it was time to move on._

_To move out._

_That you weren't in that apartment, so I didn't need it anymore._

_I guess she's right in a way._

_You're here._

_But I didn't want to have to pack your things, y'know, I didn't want to put what was left of you in cardboard boxes and stuff you away in an attic._

_  
You could've at least had the common decency to do that before you died, y'know. Spare me the hassle, and the pain._

_Of course, you could've just not died and that would've saved me a lot of hassle and pain._

_Your mom is excited, she thinks I should name it after you, but I told her there was no way that I'd name my child Preston._

_She didn't take too well to that._

_Honestly, I wish I had you here, to do the whole dorky, 'picking out the baby's name' thing, because I haven't a clue as to what to name a boy._

_But I think...no, I know his last name will be Burke._

_You deserve that._

_O'Malley's been following me around for a while now, thinking he's going to protect me from the boogie man or something I guess._

_You'd be proud of him, he's still your guy._

_I'm still your girl._

_You know that right? That no matter what, I'll always be your girl._

_It's hard for me to think that in just a little over two months that I'm going to be a mother. _

_It's scary actually._

_I know that I can do this without you now, I have to._

_But just so you know, I don't want to._

_I have to go now, the landlord is waiting for me to give him the key, and I want to spend a little bit of time in our place before I have to let it go._

_I just want to spend a little more time wrapped up in you, before I have to let you go._

_Let go of what we had, and move on with my life._

_I promise I'll come to see you more often, okay?_

_I miss you._


	18. Chapter 17

Dr. Richard Webber watched from behind his desk as a very pregnant Cristina Yang made her way into his office and lowered herself into the seat in front of him, obviously exhausted, and looked to him with reddened eyes from hours of sleeplessness.

"You wanted to see me, Chief?" She spoke quietly.

"Dr. Yang...we need to discuss your leave." He put his hands together in front of him.

She opened her mouth for a moment, looking at him in curiousity, her brow furrowed, "I told you that I was going to take leave after the baby is born."

"I can't accept that." He was firm in his approach, "You're a liability to this hospital in your condition."

"With all due respect, Dr. Webber, I'm pregnant. That's far from a condition." She shot back at him, sensing where the argument would lead.

"I can't have you on my surgical unit when your due date is rapidly coming upon us. I can't have you working 18 hour shifts when you could go into labor at any point in time."

"I'll cut back my hours." She protested.

She looked at him shaking her head gently.

Cristina knew that she wouldn't win this fight, but she also knew that she couldn't take leave, she couldn't sit at home, alone, in a house that was still very unfamiliar to her and just wait for her son to come.

She couldn't sit at home and wallow in her sadness.

"You and I both know that you never cut back your hours. Even after Preston..." his voice trailed off.

"After he died." She finished the sentence for him, bitterness overwhelming her intonation.

"My point being, you won't cut back your hours, and I can't have you on the floor."

"Why didn't you just have security take away my ID and send me home when I walked in the door?" She rose from the chair slowly, her center of gravity greatly affected by the child she was carrying, "You let Bailey work..."

"Until she had to go on bed rest. I would've made her go on leave as well, and you would do well to remember in the future that you don't question my authority, Dr. Yang."

"Of course, sir." Her words were curt.

"You can come back after your maternity leave is up, but until then, I do not want to see you in this hospital in any other capacity than as a patient, is that clear?" 

She walked from his office without answering him, without acknowledging his words.

He brought his head to his hands and massaged his temples lightly as she disappeared from his sight and he pondered the mystery that was Cristina Yang.

At first thought, he wasn't certain that she would make it after Preston had passed, and on more than one occasion, he'd thought about cutting her from the program, but always at Bailey's request he held back.

Gave her a second chance.

And a third chance.

She did not disappoint, and started coming back into her own, but there was still a great sadness about her whenever she worked.

The spark that she had once carried was long gone, though she still knew the facts, and could spout them as if she'd wrote the textbooks herself, the drive was gone.

Cristina Yang had truly lost her edge.

If he had known, the things he knew now, he would've told her that she hadn't lost her edge, but just the opposite, she had indeed found it in Preston. That she had something so very valuable and not to question it, not to try and fight it.

If only he'd known now, what he didn't know then.

He glanced over his shoulder at her making her way across the skywalk and half expected to see Preston step up to her side, a light hand on her back, guiding her to their spot, where they would look out over the railing, seeming to be no more than a teacher and a student and they would talk.

But he always knew that they were so much more than that, and it pained him now to see her making that walk alone.

To be living this life alone.


	19. Chapter 18

_It starts with a tugging at my heart, and I push the thought away that it could be 'time' as so many women say the words, contriving excitement despite their greatest fears._

_It will never be time._

_It will never be right._

_You are not here to see this, and it will never be time._

_But the tugging moves down farther into my being as I sit her alone in our...my empty house, and I fight it, putting my hand against my stomach, I can stop this._

_I can hold on just a little while longer with the vague hope that this is still all a dream._

_I rise from the chair, my abdomen swelling with searing pain and I have to take pause, leaning against the wall, begging for mercy from my body, now unforgiving._

_It can't be time._

_I grasp at the phone to call Meredith as she's told me to do a million times, and my heart stops when I hear your voice._

_The voicemail from the cell phone I never turned off, the voicemail that I listen to every night that I try to sleep and I hang up the phone, realizing that I dialed your number._

_Like you're going to drop everything you're doing and come to my side to be there for me._

_Be there for me while I have your child._

_I attempt to dial the phone again, but I feel winded and the tugging only greatens, the acme of the contraction and I'm taken aback by the amount of pain it's causing._

_If there was a physical pain to equate to the pain I've felt since you've left, this may be it._

_Or maybe it's that the physical pain is only accentuated by the emotional pain._

_It finally resides and I dial the numbers to Meredith, using those very same words that every woman udders before her world is about to be turned upside down, "It's time." I utter into the phone and she's off the other end and on her way before I can get another word out._

_I lean over the counter as another contraction tugs at me and I press my lips together, trying not to let out a cry of pain._

_I'm above that._

_I'm not one of those women._

_My mind begins to race, my contractions shouldn't be this close together so soon, and I start to think of the complications, a precipitous labor, a precipitous birth, the implications for such things._

_What could go wrong during the delivery that fate would be so cruel as to deal me a hand where I could lose the last living bit of you despite the fact that I've had a healthy pregnancy, and the first cry makes it's way through my lips._

_I can't do this without you._

_Why did you do this to me?_

_Why did you leave me?_

_I can't do this without you._

_I don't want to have this baby without you._

_I don't want to raise this baby without you._

_Another tug at my soul and I cry out again, but this time I don't know if it's the contraction or the gravity of the situation, that this is really happening._

_That I'm going to have this baby, our baby, and you're not here for it._

_That life does indeed go on, and it will go on without you._


	20. Chapter 19

"Dr. Karev, this isn't the first baby you've seen born, and it isn't the last!" Dr. Montgomery snapped at him as he stood stupefied over Cristina's bed.

He couldn't decide if it was the fact that this was the first time through everything that had happened that he'd seen her as being vulnerable and weak, or if it was the first time that he realized the levity of her loss.

"She needs oxygen, now! Dr. Karev!"

Alex snapped out of it, noticing the fetal decelerations on the monitor and pressed the oxygen mask to her face, "Cristina, breathe..." He commanded at her hushed, "The baby is getting bradycardic, and you need to breathe."

She looked at him, intense fear glowering in her eyes, "I can't do this!"

Meredith squeezed her hand on the other side of the bed, "You have to do this Cristina, you have to. There's no changing your mind now."

"I never made my mind up!" She cried out as another contraction racked her body, ''I didn't want this!"

Karev looked to the monitor, the baby's heart rate dropping dangerously lower and lower by the second and he grabbed Cristina's hand, "You want this."

"No, this is wrong, it's wrong. You shouldn't even be here!" She pulled her hand away, her back arching in pain.

"Cristina, you have to listen to me." Addison stood over her, "You're completely dilated, you're completely effaced, and you have to relax so I can get this baby out or he's going to die."

She looked up to her, her body tensed and gasping for air and shook her head, "No, no...this isn't right."

Meredith grasped her hand tighter, "Cristina, he's almost here, you just have to relax. You can do this, I know that you can."

Alex watched helplessly as she fought against Cristina, searching for the words to help her through this, something that he could say or do to make it easier for her.

But there wasn't going to be an easy anything in this situation.

He'd seen so many women since switching to Addison's service, and he'd found that he had a knack that he'd never admit to for soothing these women with the same voice and different words he'd used to pick them up in bars.

But now he felt as if there was nothing he could do.

"The baby's heart rate is 89...we have to get her into the OR if we can't get her to relax." Addison muttered, "Call the OR, we're going to have to come now."

His mind raced, thinking of the things he could say, thinking of something he could do, and it all seemed to fall into place for him. He bent over her face, grasping her hand once again, "Cristina. Listen to me. You have to listen to me, Yang."

She turned her head to him, color quickly draining from his face, her respirations greatly labored.

"Don't you want to see him? To see how much he looks like Burke? I bet he has that dorky dimple in his chin." He started pulling, anything he could. "I bet that he looks just like him. If you could just relax, and listen to Dr. Montgomery, you can see."

Cristina started to relax a little bit, her mind wandering to the life inside of her with Alex's words.

What if he did look like Burke?

"This baby will never be a replacement, Cristina, for what you've lost...but if you could just relax a little bit more and let us do our job, you can see him. It'll be like looking at him again. You want to see him, don't you?"

She fell back against the bed, and the baby's heart rate started to increase slowly, and Addison shot him a glance, telling him to keep going.

"He left this baby with you, and he wouldn't have done it if he didn't think you were capable. You know everything there is to know under the sun. You're Cristina Yang. This is childbirth. This is cake. You can handle this."

Her contractions started to increase again, and he looked to her, "Are you ready to see him?"

She nodded slightly and raised herself in the bed slightly, using everything that was left in her.

Cristina wanted to see this baby.

She wanted to see Burke.

So she focused the storm deep within her, taking the emotion, the pain, the love, everything she had left in her and built it up.

She could do this.

She knew she would have to do it alone, but she would do it. She didn't make the choice to be widowed, she didn't make the choice to get pregnant, she didn't make the choice to move from their apartment. She didn't make the choice to go on leave.

But now she had a choice to make.

Cristina decided in that moment, she would be a mother.


	21. Chapter 20

_This is unreal._

_I'm holding our son in my arms, and it's unreal._

_Meredith and everybody has gone for the night and it's just me and him. _

_He's quiet, I think he's going to be a lot like you when he gets older. _

_He already looks serious._

_I run my finger over his soft caramel skin, and he opens his eyes just enough for me to see the deep coffee brown that I loved so much in yours. _

_For the first time since you left, I smile._

_He's gorgeous, Burke, he really is._

_I continue to trail my fingers down his cheek to his chin, where your dimple has made it's mark, just as prominent as yours was, and I smile a little bigger._

_Your mother is quite taken with him, and they're moving from Alabama to Seattle to take care of him so I can finish up my residency._

_I know for sure with your mother spoiling him he's going to turn out just as stubborn and bullheaded as you were._

_She was practically begging me to name him Preston, but I told her it was still out of the question. _

_  
You would never get that lucky._

_I named him Xavier instead. _

_Xavier Michael Burke, and if you don't like it, it's too bad, because you're not here to protest._

_Your dad thinks that you would've loved it._

_Fine black curls adorn his head, and I run my fingers through them, soft and shiny, and I feel something I haven't felt in ages._

_I'm happy, I think._

_Or at least relieved._

_The room is dim, and it's as if I can feel you standing in the corner, watching the two of us, seeing your family for the first time, and it's a feeling I can't push away._

_Maybe it took him for me to realize that you've been here all along, watching me._

_With me._

_I don't hate you anymore for leaving me, I know that you wouldn't have missed out on this for the world._

_I know that you didn't go on purpose._

_I know that you fought._

_I know that you want to be here._

_That you are here- just not in the capacity that you want to be._

_I promise to take care of him, to love him, and to encourage him to be everything that he can. _

_I'll tell him that I love him every day. _

_I still don't know what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out along the way. _

_I'm so glad that I have him, I have something to live for now, something to wake up for, a purpose._

_I don't know for sure that you can hear me when I talk to you, that you're listening._

_But if you are, and I hope you are, I just want you to know..._

_I love you._


End file.
